Are We Getting Dumber?

I have noticed that reading level of “gifted” children today equates roughly to the average American child of the mid- to late-1800’s.

When I was designing a curriculum for my kids a number of years ago, a process complicated by their imbalance of reading level versus progression through other subjects like math, I discovered that in fact my children were not “gifted” but were simply right on grade level for an average child in the 1800’s.

Surprised, I began a study of educational materials and children’s literature over the last 200 years (the McGuffey Readers being an example) and found that as a society we are becoming less and less educated. We need college to complete a knowledge base that was accomplished by children over 200 years ago by the time they reached 8th grade. And these days I seriously doubt that many college graduates even reach that level.

I am not the only one who has noticed a change. Most recently Glen Reynolds at the Instapundit commented on the generational decline of reading material in text books and Jerry Pournelle published a California reader from the early 1900’s.

So I feel really odd about people commenting on my children’s reading and language abilities. It gives my kids a false and inflated sense of their capabilities. I tell my kids they are just exactly on task for early American children their age and that is all they need to concern themselves with.

So yes, my kiddos speak with big and complicated words. They read voraciously and have insatiable curiosity. They would rather read a physics text written by Richard Feynmann than fill out worksheets with cute cartoons. It may be that by the time they are old enough for college, that whole path through life may be redundant for them. They are weird as compared to many kids today. But it’s ok, they are homeschooled. And it turns out there are plenty of kids just like them. People today call them “gifted” but I just call them educated.